If you want an alternative to reputable health magazines, look no further than What Doctors Don’t Tell You (WDDTY) - the winner, once again, thanks to assiduous astroturfing, of a “people’s choice” award for most popular website in the Health category.This paean to quackery is published in the UK by US expatriate Lynne McTaggart and her husband Bryan Hubbard. Its editorial panel is a rogues’ gallery of “alternative” practitioners, several of whom are no longer licensed to practice medicine. It’s now being published in the US. Originally by subscription only, WDDTY’s editors promised to offer a well-researched independent critique of medical practice and never to take advertising, in order to stay pure. The former went by the wayside at roughly Issue 1, whose opening headline was “A Shot In The Dark: The measles vaccine in all its forms doesn't really work.” The latter was jettisoned when the magazine relaunched in a glossy “lifestyle” format in September 2012 to sell directly through mainstream outlets such as newsagents and supermarkets.It was this relaunch which brought WDDTY to wider skeptical notice.

“It is very, very unfortunate that these groups routinely misquote scientific studies. The paper says nothing of the sort. The objective of the study was to identify resistance mechanisms to cancer therapeutics and to target them to make standard therapies more effective.Our study has been misquoted and misinterpreted--I believe on purpose--by several of these groups. However, I have not wanted to expend a lot of effort trying to correct this, unless asked directly, as it only adds visibility to their claims.”

Between June 2006 and March 2014, VAERS received 96 reports of death after people received the Gardasil® vaccine. CDC and FDA review all available information on reports of death following any vaccine, including Gardasil®. Among the 96 reports of death, many could not be verified, because there was not enough information reported; 47 could be verified through clinical review of medical records, autopsy reports, and death certificates. Detailed review of every report of death following a person’s receipt of the Gardasil® vaccine has shown:

* There is no pattern of death occurring with respect to time after vaccination

* There is no consistent vaccine dose number or combination of vaccines given

* There is no diagnosis at death that would suggest that the Gardasil® vaccine caused the death

McTaggart had originally claimed up to around 2,000, revised it to 96 (which is taken directly from the CDC document that shows nobody at all has provably died from Gardasil) and then revised back up again based on… well, who knows on what basis anybody could make such an obvious error, other than massive ideological bias.This is not sloppiness; it is clearly deliberate editorial policy and it has been constant throughout the entire life of WDDTY. Ideologically consonant claims are uncritically repeated, and any contrary information is discounted because big pharma, duh.

All this makes it pretty obvious why the presentation of this magazine at supermarket checkouts was seen as a bad thing by the reality-based community. Simon Singh wrote to the publishers and was threatened with a libel writ for his pains. I started “What Doctors Don’t Tell You Don’t Tell You”, a group blog to critique WDDTY’s content. Josephine Jones has an extensive Master List of critical commentary.Since the sceptical backlash began, WDDTY has gone into full-on paranoia. Apparently a group of skeptics in hock to the pharma industry is trying to have WDDTY “banned”, which is a problem because free speech (which apparently confers an obligation on commercial organisations to market said speech). Meanwhile McTaggart and WDDTY to actuallycensor any critical content from social media pages and engage in creepy personal attacks against those who hold them to account for their misleading content.A widespread campaign of criticism and mockery has resulted in a few shops (e.g. Waitrose) withdrawing the publication. It was withdrawn from the large British supermarket chain,Tesco, and then apparently reintroduced after pressure from followers. It’s recently been withdrawn from WH Smith, Britain’s largest chain of newsagents. This is clearly hitting the editors in the wallet, because they have turned the paranoia up to eleven and now claim that “pharma-sponsored trolls” are to blame for the “censorship” and “banning” of the magazine.

Lynne McTaggart is also the author of a number of sciencey-sounding books, most notably The Field, which “gives scientific proof of the paranormal” including “psychic activity, remote viewing, the power of prayer and homeopathy”. Has she claimed the million dollar prize? Apparently not. We’re told by the publisher that it has gained “a almost cult following.” (sic)In summary, then, WDDTY is a nasty paranoid conspiracist anti-medicine, anti-science propaganda organ written and published by cranks and packed with misleading advertisements. It’s sold in mainstream outlets and its editors are unable to tell the difference between opposing the commercial propagation of dangerous nonsense and attempts to stifle free speech. They apply the characteristic SCAM double standard where by all science is conflicted unless it’s sponsored by the SCAM industry. If you see this magazine in a retail outlet, I encourage you to challenge it with the shop’s buyers.

Guy Chapman is a British skeptical blogger, nerd, amateur baritone and Wikipedia administrator. According to homeopaths he is a pharma shill, a teenager with an IQ of under 80 and lives with his mother. Bless them. You can follow him @Sceptiguy on Twitter. And do check out his Quackford English Ducktionary.

Comments are closed.

SWIFTis named after Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver's Travels. In the book, Gulliver encounters among other things a floating island inhabited by spaced-out scientists and philosophers who hardly deal with reality. Swift was among the first to launch well-designed critiques against the flummery - political, philosophical, and scientific - of his time, a tradition that we hope to maintain at The James Randi Foundation.